Digitalisation
Modern families The rapid advance of digital technologies is delivering considerable benefits to family offices worldwide – so how can traditionally run Middle Eastern families adapt to seize the opportunities?
DURING THE FIRST phase of the
pandemic, the impromptu edict for people to work from home posed a significant challenge for some family offices across the Middle East. With many still employing a hierarchical working style, heavily paperbased and dependent on a trail of personal approvals, it was difficult for transactions to take place at all, and important decisions had to be put on hold. “With everyone working from home, if you wanted to make a payment, you couldn’t get the right people to see it or sign off on it,” explains Pete Unwin, Jersey-based Director and family office specialist at wealth management services provider IQ-EQ. “And that affected those making international investments as well. Many of these businesses simply ground to a halt.” It comes as no surprise, then, that ‘going digital’ has risen rapidly up the agenda of family offices across the region. The
50 middle east edition 2021
embracing of digital technology within family-based enterprises, which was already under way before the pandemic, has been sharply accelerated. “While many family businesses have historically underinvested in digital, the pandemic has added a new urgency. Three quarters [of family businesses] say that digital, technology and innovation initiatives are a key priority,” reports Adnan Zaidi, Middle East Entrepreneurial and Private Business Leader at PwC, in the foreword to the firm’s Middle East Family Business Survey 2021. In the same survey, 59% of business leaders said they plan double-digit investment in digital transformation over the next three years. Unwin says that while business continuity was the concern at the start of the pandemic, the bigger issue now is to create a digital infrastructure that supports the growing complexity and diversification
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Words: Alexander Garrett
www.blglobal.co.uk
